My post today for the Houston Press: Tasting notes for the 2011 Pétard Blanc by La Cruz de Comal, our favorite Texas wine (and the bottle that we opened for Giovanni on Saturday night).
An Italian honky tonks in Austin (Ginny’s and Junior Brown)
honky-tonk: A tawdry drinking-saloon, dance-hall, or gambling-house; a cheap night-club (Oxford English Dictionary).
No visit to Austin would be complete without a beer (or two) at Ginny’s Little Longhorn Saloon.
To quote Giovanni (above), who’s making his first visit to the River City this week, “I love this cross-section of American culture.”
Well, I’m here to tell you folks: here in Austin, we don’t call it “culture.”
We don’t call it “country music” either. We just call it music. ;)
Next stop was the Continental Club to catch a set by Austin’s own Junior Brown, one of the most dynamic and thrilling guitar players I’ve ever seen. Remember Junior and wife Tanya Rae in this GAP commercial?
Happy Monday yall!
Georgia P hearts avocados
“You can’t get a bad meal in Napa” and my favorite Napa wine blog
Above: The burger and fries at Grace’s Table in downtown Napa. The thing that took it over the top was the superb quality of the bun.
“You can’t get a bad meal in Napa these days,” said the waiter at Grace’s Table downtown as she insisted that I taste the baguette that the restaurant sources from a bakery down the street.
I hadn’t been to Napa for three years or so: there’s been an explosion of restaurants in the town and while competition is high, I was told, there’s plenty of high-quality materia prima to go around. Say what you will about the Napa style of wine, but there’s nowhere in the U.S. that can beat the quality of the produce that the farms here deliver. And the culture that once corralled the best restaurants in the villages to the north has now graciously populated its namesake township. Gauging from a stroll in the town center, there are many affordable options for dining: my “Hand Formed Burger, Meyers Ranch Chuck, House Made Pickles, Chili d’Espellette-Parmesan Fries” was just $12.
Above: Artichoke fritters at Grace’s were delicious.
After Giovanni and I finished an early repast in town, we headed back up north to Yountville to meet the author of my favorite Napa wine blog, Vinsanity, Vinogirl.
She was pouring wine at an exclusive private event but she managed to sneak Giovanni and me through the back of the venue so that we could taste her wine and chat with her and husband Vinomaker.
Above: In Yountville, Giovanni and I were impressed by this “transgenic” sage plant, as he called it. Note the size of the plant’s leaves.
On her excellent blog, Vinogirl chronicles the vegetative cycle of Napa with wonderful photographs and occasional scouser humor (she Liverpudlian). Her posts are peppered with viticultural knowledge and insights into what’s happening “on the ground,” including the recent cooling trend that has vexed growers here.
Above: “Did you know,” writes Vinogirl on her blog today, “that there’s no Italian word for ‘bromance’?” She snapped this photo of Giovanni and me, four days into the California leg of his visit to the U.S.
Why were Giovanni and I in Napa? You’ll be surprised to know the reason and I’ll explain all next week… stay tuned…
In the meantime… Thanks again, Vinogirl, for the photo! It was so great to finally meet you!
Obsessed with K-ZO in LA
Since I began commuting monthly to Los Angeles to work with Sotto where I curate the wine list, I’ve become obsessed with K-Zo, a wonderful Japanese restaurant on Culver Blvd.
I took Giovanni there yesterday for lunch before we headed to the restaurant. It was fantastic.
Chef/owner Keizo Ishiba (above) is so cool and I’ve waited on him at Sotto. Super nice guy and a master in his kitchen. Can’t recommend it highly enough.
In other news…
Sweet potatoes!
Tracie P has been blogging about Georgia P’s baby led weaning here…
Giovanni and I are heading to Napa today… Stay tuned!
Jared Brandt, reluctant Natural winemaker at Donkey & Goat @SottoLA
Above: Polymath and reluctant Natural winemaker Jared Brandt sat down for dinner together last night at Sotto.
It’s hard to explain the role that Donkey & Goat wines play in our lives.
We serve them by the glass and by the bottle at Sotto in Los Angeles, where I curate the wine list.
Tracie P and I drink them regularly at home (the last vintage of Sluicebox is currently our house white).
And Rev. B, my father-in-law, just can’t get enough of the Berkeley winery’s red wines, which, like most of Jared’s wines are sourced from a new frontier of grape growing in contemporary California winemaking, El Dorado, where wine grapes have been grown since the time of the Gold Rush.
“It’s really interesting to see where they planted their vines” during the Gold Rush, said Jared, who doesn’t own any land there but works closely with growers.
“You’ve got to consider that they had no means to acidify their wines and so they needed to plant on sites where they had diurnal temperature variations.”
The thought of gold miners growing wine grapes in an era before Pasteur’s discoveries had taken root would have been enough to occupy the conversation for the entire evening.
But there were so many questions I had for Jared, a polymath who came to wine and winemaker later in life after a career in high tech but who has now emerged as one of our country’s leading Natural winemakers — however reluctantly.
“I don’t like labels and I don’t consider myself a Natural winemaker” per se, he said. “I think of it more as ‘unmanipulative’ winemaking. But that’s not as fun to say.”
“Basically,” he explained, “I don’t put anything in my wine that could hurt my daughter if she ate it,” referring to the many chemical treatments that even Natural and biodynamic producers use regularly. Of course, his rule of thumb resonated with me, father of a six-month-old baby girl (Tracie P has been posting about Georgia P’s Baby Led Weaning on her Sugar Pie blog, btw).
I don’t have time to recount our entire confabulatio this morning but I was impressed by his take on Native yeast.
“It seems that the one thing that everyone [of the Natural winemakers] agrees on is native yeast,” he said. “I’ve experimented with commercial yeast but every time, I’ve ended up with a stuck fermentation. You’d be surprised by how many famous Californian winemakers use native yeast.”
His approach to winemaking has been enjoying popularity among young U.C. Davis enology students, he told me. “Davis is changing: there is a generation of professors there and we have a quite a following of students who come to visit us at the winery.”
The spark that ignited his career in winemaking?
“I was collecting the wines of [Rhône producer] Eric Textier and had tasted a white wine he made and loved it. I then read in the Wine Advocate that Robert Parker found the wine undrinkable. That’s when I decided I wanted to travel to France to make wine with him.”
An ice cream machine, said Jared, is one of the techniques employed by the famed zero-sulfur producer as a means to stabilize his wines and eliminate the need for sulfur. But that will be have to be another story for another day…
Taste Jared’s wine with me tonight at Sotto if you’re in LA…
Artichoke porn (& wine) on my mind today @EatingOurWords
@JaynesGastropub has never been better
Above: The Jaynes Burger, with house-pickled red onions, Vermont cheddar, aioli, and frites — a sine qua non on any visit to San Diego for me.
It’s predictable, I know, but I just had to have the Jaynes Burger last night at Jaynes Gastropub in San Diego, where I checked in with the folks who are like family to me in the town where I grew up.
The burger’s never been better and the Caesar predictably rocked my world but I was also digging the new grilled Moroccan lamb meatballs with chickpea purée and the Québécoise chips and gravy poutine. Jaynes is simply going through one of those moments of grace that devoted, passionate restaurateurs experience — like an athlete in top form or a virtuoso musician at the zenith of a career. And I love how gourmet “comfort food” knows no international boundaries these days.
Jayne and Jon graciously let Giovanni open three bottlings of his Franciacorta to share with our friends but Jon has so many killer wines on his list right now: Venica & Venica, Movia, Valli Unite (one of my favorite Natural whites from Italy), Musar (red), Foillard Morgon Cuvée Corcelette, Massolino (classic) Barolo… such an amazing (and courageous) list in a town where “Napa Cab” and “old vine” Zinfandel generally prevail.
Thanks again, Jayne and Jon, for an awesome evening…
Giovanni’s been blogging about his Texas-California adventure here btw.
Here’s a photo he snapped yesterday from mamma Judy’s window overlooking the Pacific. The photo’s entitled “Three Shades of La Jolla Blue.”
GREAT NEWS! Bindocci new president of Brunello Consortium
Because we were recording all day, I was offline yesterday when the news broke: my friend Fabrizio Bindocci, winemaker at the historic Montalcino estate Il Poggione, has been named the new president of the Brunello bottlers association.
The news came in the wake of Ezio Rivella’s sudden departure from the post on June 8 (for personal reasons, he reported in a press release issued by Montalcino mouthpiece WineNews.it).
It’s hard to believe that nearly ten years have passed since the disastrous 2003 vintage and more than four years since the Brunello controversy exploded in 2008.
In my view, Rivella’s presidency only prolonged the issue (remember when Rivella told an Italian journalist that 80 percent of Brunello was made with grapes other than Sangiovese?).
Fabrizio is a Tuscan (Rivella is from Piedmont and didn’t even keep a residence in Montalcino while president, opting instead to commute from Rome); he was born and raised in Montalcino; he has worked for Il Poggione since 1976; and he is one of the most respected and beloved winemakers in Tuscany today.
His presidency marks a new (and happy) chapter in the saga of Montalcino and I — along with many other lovers of Brunello — could not be more thrilled.
Tracie P and I will visit with Fabrizio later this year when we travel to Montalcino.
Georgia on the mic (and heading to California)
Georgia P got to stay up past her bedtime last night after Céline and I finished our recording session and Giovanni arrived from Brescia.
After a dinner of chicken tacos with chipotle, Georgia P had fun doing karaoke to her mommy’s favorite, Xanadu by ELO.
Giovanni and I are heading today to California where we’ll be spending the night in La Jolla and then driving up to LA, where I’ll be working at Sotto tomorrow and Thursday.
Winemaker Jared Brandt of Donkey & Goat will be at the restaurant tomorrow night and we’ll be pouring a flight of three of his wines.
Stay tuned… lots of cool stuff to come… :)
Do Bianchi 